Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Non-Russian Language Education Being Decimated Under Putin

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 25 – Between 2002
and 2010, the number of schools offering non-Russian language instruction has
declined by more than 65 percent, and the number of pupils studying in these languages
has declined by nearly 80 percent, according to Olga Artemenko, a senior
scholar at the Education Ministry’s Federal Institute for the Development of
Education.

That decline, which she says
reflects school consolidation, shifting of students to Russian-language
schools, and lack of support for non-Russian education generally, is the
sharpest in modern times and threatens the survival of many of Russia’s more
than 230 ethno-national groups (nazaccent.ru/column/88/).

This trend is especially striking at a time when Moscow is demanding that neighboring countries keep
Russian-language schools open for their minorities and even make Russian a
second state language, a call that is just as perverse under the circumstances
as Moscow’s demand that other countries federalize at a time when it is
destroying federalism.

Language
developments depend both on broad economic trends and on the language policy of
the government, Artemenko says. In the past, the Russian government has been
supportive of minority languages as a result of which many languages which
would have died elsewhere have survived and even flourished there. But now that
is changing.

On the one hand, the government increasingly
makes its decisions on the basis of cost calculations rather than the value of
languages. And on the other, it now requires all non-Russian language textbooks
to be approved in Moscow. Only three languages have even some of their
textbooks approved: Tatar, Sakha and Khakass. The others don’t.

In many federal subjects, work on
new textbooks for Moscow’s approval is finishing up, but in Daghestan and
Karachayevo-Cherkesia, it hasn’t even begun, at least in part because of the
linguistic complexity of the former – Daghestan has 32 languages which enjoy
state status – and political sensitivities in the case of the latter – KChR is
one of two bi-national republics.

Many people in Moscow and elsewhere
assume that young people today would rather study English, German, and Chinese
than their native Buryat or Mokshan. “But in fact this is not entirely so,”
Artemenko says, and she cites the findings of a survey she conducted last year
among students in the 10th and 11th grades in non-Russian
areas.

Fifteen percent of those studying
Finno-Ugric languages, 33 percent of those studying Turkic languages, 20
percent of those studying Daghestani languages, and 40 percent of those
studying Chechen and Ingush languages said that they intended to organize their
careers in such a way that they would use their native language and not some
others.

Artemenko also points out that students show great interest
in the study of their ethnic group and the places where its members live, and
consequently, she says, “in order that the languages not disappear or degrade
to kitchen level, there should be created, at a minimum, conditions for those
who want to use these languages in their lives.”

The
need for that is growing not decreasing, she says, because in recent years, the
representatives of non-Russian language groups have increased by five million
people, and if their needs are not taken into account, there will be “an outbreak
of inter-ethnic tension,” just as there will be if Russian speakers have
problems in schools in non-Russian republics.

And
that requires, the scholar says, a state language policy which would promote “social
and economic stability, the development of dialogue, and the all-Russian unity
of all the peoples of Russia.”